More Middle School Portraits

In the past week, the students have experienced using mixed media as an art form. The 6th and 7th grade created portraits with different types of materials. The oil pastels and paint were by far the most popular choices.

Jon Contino Artist Study

This past Friday the 6th and 7th grade students and I watched a short video of the typography artist Jon Contino. I wanted to show the students his work because not only do I think that it is creative and fun, but his video shows how hard he worked to get where he is today. The students first watched this inspiring video of Jon talking about his art work and then wrote three words to describe Jon. The kids came up with fun, hard working, determined, caring, and cool. After this, the students used Jon's lettering as a guide to influence their own hand letter in class. The students created their names, first using pencil, and then tracing over it in ink. The results are awesome!

Jon lives in Brooklyn currently and works constantly. He loves to design new lettering styles and has had some exicitng clients recently. See his portfolio [here]

I contacted Jon, via emailed, last week and told him that we would be studying his art form in my middle school classroom. He was thrilled and excited to hear about this. So, this post is for him.